


Sin

by Rynfinity



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 17:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2820851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rynfinity/pseuds/Rynfinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor has eyes only for his brother.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  <i>This isn't so much an alternate Thor canon as it is an (imagined) look inside a few heads.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Sin

Think back as he might, he simply doesn't remember exactly when it started.

The two of them grew up together, after all. He's seen his brother in every stage of undress imaginable, for as long as he's had eyes for seeing.

On the changing cloth, squalling unhappily and shaking, with cold, tiny hands clenched into white-knuckled fists like little flowers.

Racing through the halls of the palace as very young children, himself in his smallclothes and Loki - darting out ahead, always - in nothing whatsoever, their tiny feet slapping on the marble and his brother’s little legs a blur.

Skinny-dipping in the cool, still waters of the place fishponds, trying and failing to catch golden carp, where each coppery fish is nearly the length and breadth of their own goose-pimpled torsos.

Tumbling into bed fresh from the baths on any one of Asgard's hot summer evenings, with the sun only just lost below the distant horizon and fireflies blinking bright in the gardens beneath the nursery balcony

Sparring – after a very childish fashion - on the training grounds, clad only in loincloths and soft leather boots, Loki's skinny young arms straining against the weight of his stave and Thor's own straw-colored hair dripping sweat.

Dressing for this or that dreaded _affair of state_ , transforming themselves as if by magic from rough-and-tumble boys to sleek, silk-and-steel-clad future kings in front of the gilded floor-to-ceiling mirror that ever graces their childhood chambers.

Over and over and over. Thor naked, Loki naked. It was the way of things. They were, after all, brothers.

~

Loki had cried the day the two of them were separated, and again and again for at least a fortnight thereafter. "But I've done nothing wrong," he'd insisted, clinging first to his brother's wrist and then, with both fists dug into the heavy, embellished fabric, to their mother's voluminous skirts. "Why then, mother, why? Why am I being punished?"

"Hush, my sweet,” Frigga had soothed. "For ‘tis not punishment to be granted your own chambers. Before much time has passed you will leave boyhood behind, Thor all the sooner, and then you will be thankful that you have your own space."

"But I don’t _want_ my own space. I want to be with _Thor_ ,” Loki had wailed, clutching all the harder. Frigga'd had to pry him free, one small and sticky finger at a time. "I don’t want my own rooms. I never will. I hate you both," he'd screamed at the end, as Thor had followed Frigga out into the hallway. "You'll be sorry, I swear it. You'll see."

For quite a while, actually, Thor had been sorry. His own new rooms – beautiful and suitably-located as they were - had been strange and lonely, and he'd often wanted nothing more than to have his little brother curled warm and sleepy by his side.

Gradually, though, he had adjusted. They both had.

~

Long after their forced separation the two of them had still played together on occasion, Thor with his toy soldiers and Loki with (his carefully sculpted horses and then, later on) his imaginary magical bestiary. More and more, though, their roads of their lives had begun to lead off in diverging directions. Thor's focus had been – much as it remains today - on his training, as befitted a future king of Asgard. Gradually he had taken to spending longer and longer hours in the ring with Sif, Fandral, and Hogun, their swords clattering and singing and their knuckles perpetually bruised and scabby.

Loki, for his part, had gravitated away from the more soldierly crowd and towards his own studies. While Odin had charged one of his younger warriors - the big and boisterous Volstagg, known for an impressive red beard and an insatiable appetite - with Thor's development, Frigga herself had taken to seeing after Loki's.

It was said his brother’s mastery of the finer points of seidr had quickly come to rival that of Asgard's most well-renowned sorcerers.

The more time the two of them had spent apart, the less need they’d felt to spend time together. It had been a slow and natural progression, the result of time and not battle, and Thor had felt neither animosity nor discomfort for his part. If Loki had grown more and more distant, it was an expected side effect of becoming men… an inevitable change which in and of itself had given Thor neither unhappiness nor pleasure.

~

It is with no small measure of surprise, then, that Thor catches himself _staring_ as his brother – Loki, who has stopped down to the training grounds for a rare public bout this bright summer’s morning, body lithe and graceful in fitted leggings and the soft leather boots they all still wear to spar - warms up in the ring. The air is warm and thick already, the full heat of summer upon them; by midday it will be far too hot for such sport. So, Thor knows, he should not be surprised to find the grounds busy. In fact, he should not even be surprised to find Loki here.

Even so, it feels like he has not truly looked at his brother in an age.

Loki's alabaster skin slides easily over his delicate bones and wiry musculature. He moves like a dancer, the wooden stave an extension of his long, elegant arms. He whirls and twists, feinting and jabbing, a swirling cloud of dust rising at his feet.

His moves are smooth and practiced. Confident. He is efficient, swift-striking and dangerous, in much the same manner as the snakes down by the river or the big hunting cats which stalk the mountains above the palace. When and where Loki learned this, Thor does not know, but there’s no question he has become- nothing short of deadly.

Thor feels the world tilting, a sudden rush of something very much akin to vertigo. His brother is falling away from him, going where he cannot follow, and yet he has never wanted to accompany Loki more.

It cannot be more than five minutes' time before Thor, arms resting heavily on the ring's edge, sees and feels nothing so broadly logical. Instead he finds himself focused solely on the thin trickles of sweat which trace the long, dirt-smeared sweep of his brother's ribs. The play of light and shadow over Loki's whirling torso. The delicate curve of a collarbone. The arch of his brother's long, supple neck. The brief, tantalizing sight of first one pink-taupe nipple and then the other as Loki – hands nimble - flips the staff this way and that to make the polished wood by turns dance and sing.

The faint shadow of dark hair which trails from just below his brother's shifting navel and disappears beneath the low-slung waistband of his leggings, heading for the-…

 _Enough_. Thor shakes his head violently to rid himself of so base an image. This is his _brother_ ; he cannot allow himself to contemplate such _filth_. Loki is here to fight like a warrior, not to be reduced to the lesser sum of greater parts like some common whore.

Thor blinks and rubs his eyes, striving to force his mind back to the practice before him. When that doesn't work, he leaves. As he climbs the worn, dirty steps leading off to the armory, he can almost swear he feels his brother's sharp green eyes boring into him.

~

No matter how hard he tries, Thor finds he can think of little else. Everywhere he turns his brother's limber body is etched across his sight. He evades Loki at dinner, instead following duty's call to join the squires from the outermost strongholds in their well-fed, raucous talk.

Still, he dreams of his brother... in a way that is so decidedly unbrotherly that Thor wakes stained with more than sweat. He's horrified. This simply must stop.

~

He finds himself increasingly grateful for the natural distance that grows between them. As time passes it becomes easier and easier to spend long hours with his own friends, the company of whom Loki largely eschews. And the more hours he spends with his own companions, the simpler it becomes to view his brother through the distorting lens of their combined opinion – as disagreeable, standoffish, trouble-stirring, and rash - rather than through that of his own most traitorous and dangerous libido.

Loki, for his part, takes to spitting like a wet cat when fate throws any of them together. Rumor becomes reality, in that he only befriends Thor - befriends any of them, for that matter – on the rare occasion he wants something.

That takes care of most of it. Thor finds an extra few drinks before retiring – before entering the dangerous world of _dreams_ \- largely addresses the rest.

~

If perhaps he is a bit too harsh - a bit too slow to rein in his friends and their unkind jabs, the day they collectively (as in he, himself) decide(s) to challenge Laufey – then such is the price of maintaining some modicum of decency. Thor knows he cannot afford to give in to his own weakness, not in this, and of late it has felt more and more as though Loki has been- well, willfully goading him. Egging him on, even, as if his own dirty mind shows in his face. Sometimes he has caught his brother looking at him with that secretive smirk that seems to hold so, so much dark promise.

It is a trap. Or, even worse, it is just Thor seeing what he wishes to see.

 _This_ day he fights back – against his brother, against the most humiliating of his own urges… perhaps most of all against being thwarted - the only way he can: with all the imperiousness a crown prince can muster. "Know your place," he orders as his brother urges caution. And then together they dive.

~

The next time Thor dives, he dives alone.

~

By and large mortals are kind and gracious… far more so, Thor knows, than he has any right to expect. He isn't free to return their affections, though he strives to be polite; no, however he longs not to, he still lusts after his brother. Until he is cured of this affliction, Mjolnir cannot help but spurn his own filthy grip.

Consequently, until he puts all of this nonsense behind him, Thor knows he will not be going home.

~

During his short stay on Midgard - with his brother's unwitting help, of all things: Loki's lies, treachery, and blatantly homicidal intent - Thor does the very best he can to purge his unworthy mind and body of their twisted wants. And when at last he returns to Asgard, to face and do battle with a brother he no longer knows at all and scarcely recognizes, Thor briefly thinks he may finally be free. Clean. Pure.

Worthy once again of being someone's brother.

Loki is one _someone_ who no longer wants a brother. Who no longer wants anyone or anything, save to hate with a passion that overrides even the most innocent of Thor's brotherly affections.

~

The end is as sudden as it is unexpected. One moment Thor is striving to thwart his brother's crazed revenge by smashing Mjolnir down upon the very Bifrost itself; the next Loki is falling far beyond his reach.

All Thor can do is scream, which is in fact the same as doing nothing.

~

The realm feasts, a grand celebration of Loki's life whereby Asgard only proves his brother better loved in death. Thor feels by turns empty, hollow, and full of a suffocating, choking guilt he dares not inspect too closely.

The bards’ stories nearly always anger him, and when they do not they fill him with the hottest imaginable shame.

~

Thor spends more and more time alone. He stands often at the new end of their realm, sometimes by himself and sometimes with the Guardian. And while he claims to seek only news of the mortals, the ones who had showed him such great and unwarranted kindness in the face of fear, he still cannot shake the sense that Heimdall _knows_.

He does what he can to make it all up to his mother and father; their loss is surely purer if no keener than his own. He is kind to them, and gracious, the good son they no longer have.

In time, they all of them - outwardly, at least - move on.

A small and cursed bit of Thor still dreams the dreams and thinks the awful thoughts. Try as he might (and oh, does he try) he simply cannot find any fire that serves to burn his sin away.

 _Maybe it is for the best,_ he tells himself on the worst days, the ones where he can scarcely muster the energy to put one foot in front of the other. The ones where he feels Loki's loss so keenly that it dwarfs even the most terrible physical pain. _For now he is free of the burden from which I failed to fully shield him,_ Thor reminds himself. Why else would such a wonder have gone mad?

~

"I miss him dearly," Thor tells Sif one time too many.

"Thor," she starts, "know that I am loathe to tell you this. Still, you should know: it may truly be for the best this way," she offers, her voice pitched soft and low, as together they slowly walk Asgard's golden halls, "for Loki loved you ever so much... and by that, I fear," she goes on, carefully not meeting his gaze, "I do not mean _the way one loves a brother_."

Thor gasps. “He told you thus?”

“Not in so many words,” she counters. “You know your brother; Loki was subtler than that. Still, it would have been nearly impossible to miss his intentions entirely. Honestly, I have always been surprised to find you yourself so blind.”


End file.
